We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
Judy Watson / Waanyi people / Australia b.1959 / memory bones 2007 / Pigment and pastel on canvas / The James C. Sourris AM Collection. Gift of James C. Sourris through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2010. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Judy Watson/Licensed by Viscopy, 2013
Judy Watsonmemory bones 2007
Not Currently on Display
Judy Watson’s memory bones 2007 was created when the political ferment surrounding the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee on Palm Island, and the charging of Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley with assault and manslaughter, was at its zenith. Represented in this work are Mulrunji’s 16 fractured ribs and blood, which spilled as he lay dying in the Palm Island police station with fatal internal injuries.
Judy Watson was born in 1959 in Mundubbera, west of Maryborough, in south-east Queensland, and lives in Brisbane. The spirit and substance of her work can be found in the homeland of her grandmother and great-grandmother. A descendant of the Waanyi people of north-west Queensland, Watson completed a fine arts degree at the University of Tasmania in 1982.
While living in Sydney, Watson exhibited in the 1989 Artspace survey exhibition ‘A Koori Perspective’ and became associated with the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, which had been established to promote the work of urban Indigenous artists.
In 1995, she received the Moët & Chandon Australian Art Fellowship, and two years later was represented the country in the Australian Pavilion at the 47th Venice Biennale as part of ‘Fluent: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Yvonne Koolmatrie, Judy Watson’. Watson’s work explores drawing, printmaking, painting and sculpture, all referencing an Indigenous connection to land and history.